Note 7 — Chapter XLV · THE LOWER AMUR.

Réclus quotes Von Middendorf to the effect that on the map of Remezov, which appeared in the seventeenth century, a town is marked on this spot as the limits of the conquests of the Tsar Alexander of Macedon, who hid his arms and left there a bell. Such was the tradition of the Cossacks. Again, Ravenstein quotes Witsen to the effect that Russian warriors, 30 or 40 years ago, found a bell weighing 660 lbs. at a place which seems to have been dug round, and near which stood several stones bearing Chinese inscriptions; and he adds that a manuscript of 1678, in the library of the Siberian department, mentions the same facts. My fellow-passengers spoke of the monuments as dating back to the time of Ghengis Khan, and erected to mark the limit of his conquests. Once more, Mr. Ravenstein asserts that one of the emperors of the Yuen dynasty (which flourished in China from 1234 to 1368, A.D.) went by sea to the mouth of the Amur, in commemoration of which he built at Tyr the monastery of “Eternal Repose.” To come to our own times, Mr. Collins relates that the inscriptions on the monuments were translated by the Archimandrite Avvakum, who for several years was connected with the Russian Mission at Peking, and who descended the Amur about 1857 as interpreter to Count Putiatin’s embassy, then on its way to China. Mr. Collins obtained from an officer a translation from the Russian into English of the Archimandrite’s interpretation.